Millennials: Traditional Retirement Might Not Be In The Cards

As people work and live longer in better health, some experts are suggesting that retirement—a traditional retirement, in which you stop working entirely—may become a thing of the past.

“With a 100-year life becoming the reality for many, the idea of retiring at 65 with 40-plus years of retirement to fund no longer seems practical,” says Morag Barrett, CEO of leadership development firm Skyeteam and co-author of the forthcoming book, The Future-Proof Workplace. “Can you imagine the size of the retirement fund we would need to save up to cover this?”

Instead, Barrett and her co-author, business consultant Linda Sharkey, Ph.D., posit that retirement will instead become a series of sabbaticals. “Forget work-life balance,” Barrett says. “The future is that it is all life, with work as a part of it.”

After many conversations with Millennials for their book, Barrett and Sharkey believe the future will involve periods of work that fund a sabbatical, followed by a return to work to refill the coffers for the next sabbatical. “There will likely still be a period of retirement at the end of that journey, but it won’t be the same as we have experienced to date,” Barrett says.